A. The Prior Art
Electronic apparatus are well known which have a keyboard comprising a plurality of electrical contacts, electronic circuitry for generating electrical signals of a musical nature whose frequency content is determined by which key or keys of the keyboard have been depressed and the associated contacts closed, and a loudspeaker or other transducer for converting such musical electrical signals into audible musical sounds.
Additionally, game and amusement electronic apparatus are well known in which different tunes are pre-programmed and stored within a read-only memory associated with a micro-processor or other computational element controlling the operation of the apparatus, so that in response to certain operational sequences, selected ones of said tunes may be generated electronically and made audible to the player.
However, it is not believed that any prior art electronic musical apparatus was adapted for the playing of a game of musical concentration, such as attempting to match pairs of designators that have been both assigned to the same tune in a manner unknown to the players at the game's commencement.
B. Summary of the Invention
Accordingly, it is an overall object of the present invention to provide electronic apparatus adapted for playing a game of musical concentration.
It is a more specific object of the present invention to provide such an apparatus wherein the game entails matching to each other a pair of buttons on a keyboard (or other designating means) which have been associated with the same musical tune at the game's commencement in a predetermined but more or less random fashion unknown to the players.
It is another object of the present invention to provide electronic musical apparatus which will enhance the musical skill of a player by encouraging him to learn how to distinguish different musical sequences from one another and optionally by giving the player the opportunity to imitate the pre-programmed tunes (or any other sequences of musical notes) by playing them "by ear" one note at a time.
Briefly, the invention which satisfies these and such other objects as will become more apparent from the study of the detailed description of a preferred embodiment which follows, is an electronic amusement apparatus having a keyboard with a plurality of buttons which may be selected by the player one at a time (or other designator means), an electronic music synthesizer/transducer for generating the musical notes associated with various pre-programmed tunes and making them audible to the player, and an electronic game controller which associates at the commencement of a game some or all of the tunes with pairs of said buttons selected more or less at random, and which for each turn of play causes said musical synethesizer/transducer to play at least a portion of the tune associated with a first selected button and then, depending upon whether the second selected button is from another button pair or is paired with the first button, either causes at least a portion of the tune associated with the second button to be heard or else a signal output signifying the successful matching of a pair of buttons associated with the same tune.
As an option, the apparatus may be provided with mode selector buttons affecting the level of difficulty of the game play; furthermore, one or more of the keyboard buttons may be randomly assigned a "wild" status, and will be treated as matching any not yet matched button.
The preferred embodiment incorporates the optional capability of allowing the player to play tunes "by ear" one note at a time.